Scholar's Bias Against Hispanics Dangerous

MARY SANCHEZ | OP-EDThe Hartford Courant

Jason Richwine is a type in American politics.

He holds a doctorate from Harvard. He writes studies, appears at conservative conferences in suit and tie, and expounds the same old nonsense about immigrants that we've been hearing since the Know Nothings had their last hurrah.

Sure, his work is perfumed with the air of scholarly respectability, writing as he does from the perch of "senior policy analyst" at the Heritage Foundation, but his eugenics-based beliefs bear more than a whiff of white supremacism.

One of his learned opinions is that Hispanics are genetically inferior intellectually and will never fully assimilate into U.S. society.

Yes, you read that right.

If you're unfamiliar with Richwine, he's getting notice as co-author of a study his conservative think tank hopes will defeat immigration reform legislation in Congress. The paper argues, unconvincingly, that changing current immigration law will cost the United States trillions of dollars.

Having read Richwine's report, a curious blogger at the Washington Post looked up his other work and discovered his 2009 Ph.D. dissertation. In it, the young scholar argued that IQ should be the means used to select immigrants, observing by the way that there are too many intellectually inferior Hispanics already in the country.

It would be difficult to convey the offensiveness of this scholarly work, titled "I.Q. and Immigration Policy," than to quote a few choice lines.

"No one knows whether Hispanics will ever reach IQ parity with whites, but the prediction that new Hispanic immigrants will have low-IQ children and grandchildren is difficult to argue against," Richwine wrote. "From the perspective of Americans alive today, the low average IQ of Hispanics is effectively permanent."

A Heritage spokesman had this to say about the dissertation: "This is not a work product of The Heritage Foundation. Its findings in no way reflect the positions of The Heritage Foundation. Nor do the findings affect the conclusions of our study on the cost of amnesty to the U.S. taxpayer."

Ah, yes, the cost of amnesty. The Heritage study tried to argue that giving them legal status would wind up costing $6.3 trillion over 50 years. It's a regurgitation of an old Heritage study, also long debunked for ratcheting up projected costs while ignoring economic benefits.

It's pathetic scholarship, which is to say the same fine stuff Heritage is known for. Heritage must have been familiar with his dissertation when it hired this guy. In any case, his toxic views fit right into the think tank's goals.

In his dissertation, Richwine dredged up the old pseudo-science of eugenics. That's the same baseless theories about racial and ethnic superiority that have caused nations to embrace selective sterilization, slavery, apartheid and worse.

It's dangerous stuff, and Richwine knows it.

He counseled using euphemisms like "skill-based" when proposing which immigrants should be welcomed via IQ tests, to "blunt the negative reaction."

Negative reaction, Jason? To the proposals of a guy who feels permitted to warn that more Latinos — sorry, low-IQ immigrants — will lead to "more underclass behavior, less social trust." That's code for criminals and degenerates. For some reason, I'm thinking of those old Thomas Nast cartoons of apelike Irish immigrants.

Richwine is offensive, but he's also wrong.

Hispanics are assimilating at the same rates as previous immigrant groups, in some ways even faster due to technology. (Note: This column is written in English, by the daughter of an immigrant from Mexico.)

Immigrants have lower rates of criminal conduct than native-born people. And a new study shows that Hispanic high school graduates have now overtaken white students in rates of enrollment into college.

And it's long been noted that immigrants have exceptionally high rates of entrepreneurship in starting small businesses.

Unfortunately, it's not difficult to get some people to believe that they are somehow "better" than whole ethnic groups not that different from them. And that any social policy that might impact another person's well-being will "take" something from them.

But set aside the prejudiced hatreds being stoked.

Richwine is also arguing against something that Americans hold dear. And that's the very promise of this country. He's attempting to undercut the lofty ideals of opportunity enshrined at the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.